第8章 现实主义时期•豪威尔•詹姆斯
8.1 复习笔记
I. American Realism（美国现实主义）
Realism was a reaction against Romanti cism and paved the way to Modernism.
During this period a new generation of writers, dissatisfied with the Romantic ideas in the older generation, came up with a new inspiration. This new attitude was characterized by a great interest in the realities of life. It aimed at the interpretation of the realities of any aspect of life, free from subjective prejudice, idealism, or romantic color. Instead of thinking about the mysteries of life and death and heroic individualism, people's attention was now directed to the interesting features of everyday existence, to what was brutal or sordid, and to the open portrayal of class struggle.
So writers began to describe the integrity of human characters reacting under various circumstances and picture the pioneers of the Far West, the new immigrants and the struggles of the working classes.
Mark Twain, Howells and Henry James are three leading figures of the American Realism.
现实主义是对浪漫主义的一种反抗，并为现代主义做了铺垫。
在这一时期，新一代的作家对浪漫主义观点颇为不满，于是提出了新的思想。新的理念对现实生活产生极大的关注，目的在于真实地反映现实生活的各个方面，摒弃主观的偏见，理想主义或是浪漫主义色彩。人们不再考虑生与死的神秘和个人英雄主义，而是直接关注日常生活的特点，写生活的残忍和卑贱，坦率地描述阶级斗争。
作家开始描述各种各样环境下人性格当中的正直，并描写在遥远西部的拓荒者，新移民和工人阶级的斗争。
马克吐温，豪威尔斯和亨利·詹姆斯是美国现实主义的代表作家。
II. William Dean Howells（威廉姆·迪恩·豪威尔斯）
1．Life（生平）
He was born in a small town in Ohio and brought up in humble surroundings. He had little formal education but read widely. He was the first president of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, once the editor-in-chief of the country’s most influential journal, The Atlantic Monthly. He was a prolific writer. He wrote volumes of drama, poetry, and novels in addition to criticism, travelogues, and autobiography.
豪威尔斯出生在俄亥俄州一个小城镇，在一个卑微的环境中成长。他没有受过多少正规的教育，但阅读涉猎广泛。他曾是美国艺术文学院的院长，并曾担任过国内最有影响力的期刊——《大西洋月刊》的主编。他是一位多产的作家。他写了大量的戏剧、诗歌和小说，另外还有评论文、旅行见闻及自传。
2．Literary point of view（文学批评观）
(1) He defines realism as “fidelity to experience and probability of motive”, a quest of the average and the habitual rather than the exceptional and the unique high or low.
(2) Man in his natural and unaffected dullness was the object of Howells’s fictional representation.
(3) Realism is by no means mere photographic pictures of externals but includes a central concern with “motives” and psychological conflicts.
(4) Realism, interpreting sympathetically the “common feelings of commonplace people,” was best suited as a technique to express the spirit of America.
(5) With regard to literary criticism, Howells felt that the literary critic should not try to impose arbitrary or subjective evaluations on books but should follow the detached scientist in accurate description, interpretation, and classification.
(1) 他指出，“现实主义忠实于生活，反映动机的可能性”，寻求表现一般性和习惯性，而不是特殊性或独特的高尚或卑微现象。
(2) 他表现的主体是自然、不娇柔做作的人。
(3) 现实主义绝非简单的摄影式再现生活，它包含着对“动机”和心理矛盾的描绘和分析。
(4) 现实主义是要表现普通人一般的情感，目的在于诉说美国的精神。
(5) 关于文学批评，豪威尔主张文学批评家不应随意地主观地去评价作品，应该中立地去做准确精炼的描述，阐释和分类。
3．Major works（主要作品）
The Rise of Silas Lapham《塞拉斯·拉帕姆的发迹》
A Modern Instance《现代婚姻》
A Hazard of New Fortunes《新财富的危害》
Criticism and Fiction《批评与小说》
4．Analysis of major work（主要作品分析）
◆The Rise of Silas Lapham《塞拉斯·拉帕姆的发迹》
In this novel Howells’ qualities as a novelist are shown at their best. It relates the story of a new upstart in mid-19thC in Boston. It is a fine specimen of American realistic writing. There is nothing heroic, dramatic or extraordinary. Howells is here so devoted to the small, the trivial, and the commonplace.
In this novel the author emphasizes on ethics, stresses the need for sympathy and moral integrity and the need for different social classes to adapt to one another. The author criticizes the rise of materialism in American life.
该小说充分体现了豪威尔斯这位小说家的素养。它讲述了19世纪中期波士顿一个暴发户的故事。它是美国现实主义文学的典范。这里没有英雄主义，没有戏剧化或非同寻常的情节。豪威尔斯专注于描写渺小、琐碎及平常的事务。
在这部小说中作者强调道德，强调同情心、道德高尚以及不同社会阶层互相适应、和谐相处的必要性。作者批判了美国生活中的物质主义。
III. Henry James（亨利·詹姆斯）
He is considered the founder of psychological realism. He was the first American writer to conceive his artistic work in international themes.
他是心理现实主义的先驱。他是美国第一个致力于国际题材的作家。
1．Life（生平）
Henry James was born into a wealthy cultured family of New England. His brother, William James, was to be the famous philosopher and psychologist. To some extent, his family background decides his theme: he wrote about the wealthy, deep-rooted leisure class. At a very early age, he was exposed to the cultural influence of Europe. In 1876, he settled down in London, and spent the rest of his life there.
亨利·詹姆斯生于新英格兰一个家境富裕的书香门第。他的哥哥威廉·詹姆斯是著名的哲学家和心理学家。在一定程度上，他的家庭背景决定了他写作的主题：他的作品主要是叙述富有悠闲的上流社会的生活。他早年深受欧洲文化的影响。1876年他定居伦敦在那里度过余生。
2．James’ literary point of view（詹姆斯的文学批评观）
(1) As a realist, he holds that art must be related to life, the aim of the novel is to represent life. He advocates an immense increase of freedom in novel-writing and argues for inclusion of the disagreeable, the ugly and the commonplace.
(2) James’s realism is characterized by his psychological approach to his subject matter. He emphasized the inner awareness and inward movements of his characters in face of outside occurrence rather than merely portraying their environment in any detail.
(3) James was concerned with “point of view” which is at the center of his aesthetic of the novel. James avoids the authorial omniscience as much as possible and makes his characters reveal themselves with his minimal intervention.
(1) 作为一个现实主义作家，他认为艺术与生活息息相关，小说存在的理由是就是表现生活。他主张应予小说写作极大的自由，作品应包括所有不愉快、丑陋的现象。现实的气氛是小说最大的优点。
(2) 詹姆斯作品的题材有明显的心理分析的特点，他不仅仅细致地描述外部环境，更多的是强调人物的内心活动。
(3) 詹姆斯关心叙事角度，这是他小说美感的关键。他避免用全能视角，他让角色表现他们自己而尽量不加干涉。
3．Theme（主题）
During his lifetime his fame rested largely upon his handling of his major fictional theme, “the international theme”: the meeting of America and Europe, American innocence in contact and contrast with European decadence, and its moral and psychological complications. For the American it was a process of progression from inexperience to experience, from innocence to knowledge and maturity.
詹姆斯的名声主要是建立在他的小说主题“国际主题”上的，即美国和欧洲的相会。美国的天真和欧洲的堕落、道德和心理上的复杂性相对照。对美国人而言，这是一个从积累经验、增长知识、走向成熟的过程。
4．Style（写作风格）
James is not so easy to understand. He is often highly refined and insightful. With a large vocabulary, he is always accurate in word selection, trying to find the best expression for his literary imagination. Therefore Henry James is not only one of the most important realists of the period before the First World War, but also the most expert stylist of his time.
詹姆斯的作品不易理解。他语言优美，眼光独到。他词汇量丰富，选词准确，力求寻找能够表达他所想的最佳表达方式。因此詹姆斯不仅是一战前的这段时期最重要的现实主义作家之一，也是最老练的文体家。
5．Major works（主要作品）
The American《美国人》
Daisy Miller《黛西·米勒》
The Portrait of a Lady《贵妇人的画像》
The Bostonians《波士顿人》
The Princess Casamassima《卡萨玛西玛公主》
The Turn of the Screw《拧螺丝》
When Maisie Knew《梅西见闻》
The Ambassadors《专使》
The Wings of the Dove《鸽翼》
The Golden Bowl《金碗》
6．Analysis of major works（主要作品分析）
◆The Portrait of a Lady《贵妇人的画像》
This novel tells about the fate of one of those splendid Jamesian American girls, Isabel Archer, arriving in Europe, full of hope and with a will to live a free and noble life, only to fall prey to the sinister designs of two vulgar and unscrupulous expatriates, Madame Merle and Gilbert Osmond. Isabel’s dreams and expectations evaporate: her unawareness of evil around her and her money combine to work her undoing.
小说讲述了典型的詹姆斯式的美国姑娘伊莎贝尔·阿切尔，来到欧洲，满怀希望过一种自由和高贵的生活，却不幸落入两个粗野且不择手段的默尔太太和吉尔伯特·奥斯蒙德的歹毒圈套里。伊莎贝拉的美梦和期望破碎了：她对周围人对她及她的财富的虎视眈眈毫无察觉，这导致了她的毁灭。
◆The Ambassador《专使》
The Ambassador, which James considered his “most perfect” work of art, is a comedy of American and European manners. Strether, the middle-aged American, is sent to Paris to bring back the young man too fascinated with Europe to return home, but is eventually convinced that Paris is the place both for the young man and for himself. James stresses mutual understanding and sympathy.
《专使》是詹姆斯自认为最完美的著作。它是一部关于美国和欧洲举止方式的喜剧。它讲述了中年美国男子斯特雷瑟赴巴黎接一位迷恋欧洲的年轻人回家，但是最终却相信巴黎才是这个年轻人和他自己应该生活的地方。詹姆斯强调了相互理解和同情。